According to the Tulsa World Report, the ceremony took place at the Antioch Baptist Church, where 750 loved ones, friends and community members squeezed into the church, and hundreds outside of the church watched the funeral on two TV screens. The three-hour service was lively with boasting inspirational gospel music and praise dancing, along with the following speakers: Crutcher family lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons, Crutcher’s cousins the Rev. A. Cortes Rex and Shea Seals, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett and Sen. Kevin Matthews and Rev. Barbara Shannon, of the Crutcher’s family church, The Root noted.

The first speaker, Solomon-Simmons, talked about the type of person Crutcher was and how his friend’s death could have happened to him.

“It could have been me,” said Solomon-Simmons, “because, just like Terence, I’m 40 years old, and just like Terence, I’m bald-headed, and just like Terence, some people think I look like a bad dude, but just like I am, Terence was not a bad dude.”

Seals talked also talked about how Terence was more than just a racial stereotype.

“He’s always been known as Crutch, Big Crutch and even Fat Crutch,” Seals acknowledged. “I’ve known you pretty much all my life, and you’ve never been known as a bad dude, not a bad dude. We’re going to miss you, bro. We love you,” he said.

“I feel very fortunate to have spent 40 years with him, but I’m also devastated,” Seals continues. “I’m devastated because it should have been 40 more.”

On September 16 after his car stalled in the street, Crutcher was shot and killed him by white police officer Betty Shelby. On Thursday, Shelby was charged with first-degree manslaughter, but was released on $50,000 bail on Friday. If found guilty, she could face four years to life in prison.

Lupita Nyong’o And Soular Are Providing Study Lights To Children Without Electricity In Africa

Source: Jeffrey Mayer / Getty

Electricity and lighting are parts of life that so many of us take for granted, but in the developing world, being able to see can be the difference between excelling in school and being left behind. This is why Oscar-winner and “Queen of Katwe” star Lupita Nyong’o has teamed up with Soular Backpack to provide students with electricity to help further their education.

According to Blavity, these backpacks makes use of solar panels to charge an LED light students can use at night to study and do homework. So for every hour spent in the sun, each student will have access to 5 hours of light from the lamp. Nyong’o said wanted to get involved when she heard of the company while filming “Queen of Katwe” in Katwe, Uganda, a place where only 20 percent of residents have access to electricity, Blavity noted.

“I think this project has the power to change the world and I would like to see it move worldwide… To see children take charge of their education and be able to support themselves in this very, very simple and practical way, I think is extremely powerful. Because when you give a child that kind of illumination, they can excel better in school because they have the power to educate themselves,” she recently told ABC News.

Each year the MacArthur Foundation chooses a group of between 20 and 30 innovators and awards them with “genius grants” of a whopping $625,000. The 2016 fellows were recently announced and three of them are African-American women: Kellie Jones, Claudia Rankine and Joyce J. Scott

Jones is an art historian and curator who specializes in the African Diaspora.

Rankine is an award-winning poet whose five collections has explored the emotional and psychic experiences of those living in twenty-first-century America.

Scott is a jewelry maker and sculptor who uses her work to comment on social injustice, racism and sexism.